


Grief Lessons

by Band_obsessed



Category: Doctor Who (2005), Torchwood
Genre: Angst with a Happy Ending, Five Stages of Grief, Fix-It, Grief/Mourning, Hurt/Comfort, M/M, Pete's World (Doctor Who), Series 03 Fix-It: Children of Earth (Torchwood)
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2021-03-15
Updated: 2021-03-15
Packaged: 2021-03-24 01:48:16
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,936
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/30064806
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Band_obsessed/pseuds/Band_obsessed
Summary: "What groaning,what lament,what song of death,what dance of Hadesshall I do?"~ EuripidesOra CoE fix-it in five parts, one for every stage of grief.
Relationships: Jack Harkness/Ianto Jones
Comments: 1
Kudos: 19





	Grief Lessons

**Author's Note:**

> While writing my mammoth of a fix-it for CoE, I had so many other 'off-shoot' ideas, all ways in which Ianto could be saved/resurrected/brought back. Rather than writing these all into separate stories in their own right, I compiled five of them, each assigned to a different stage of grief. 
> 
> They are unconnected apart from the fact that Ianto is (rightly so) resurrected in some form or another. I hope you enjoy <3
> 
> Quote in summary and title taken from Anne Carson's _Grief Lessons_.

_i — denial_

The stillness beneath Jack’s palm is _wrong._ He thinks he must finally understand what the Doctor feels when he looks at him. All that coiled indifference spilling hotly into anger, sharpening its nails against the line of disgust. It has Jack in its claws, now. Slashes him deeper than any Weevil had, than any knife, settles in his stomach like a bomb.

Except this one will never detonate. It will eat at him, he knows, until he is nothing but a shell. A death of everything except the corporeal.

And still, he checks again. Unbuttons Ianto’s collar to press shaking fingers against the column of his throat, pale and unmarred save for the single half-healed mark above his clavicle.

Jack remembers leaving it six days ago. Remembers rolling over and pressing kisses to Ianto’s shoulder in the honeyed light of dawn. Everything had stilled, then — slowed to a crawl. There was nothing but the sleep-drunk smile on Ianto’s face, arm creased from the sheets. His skin had tasted faintly of salt, of soap beneath Jack’s mouth, the sharp scent of his shampoo cutting through the soft milk-like smell of sleep.

It won’t ever heal now. It will rot with the rest of him, return his body to the earth, to atoms, scattered so far apart Jack will never be able to find a single fragment of him again. The knowledge gnaws at his chest, swells and swells until it spills from his lips, runs from his eyes like blood, like ants crawling across his skin.

“There’s nothing we can do, Jack,” Gwen whispers, broken.

Jack’s own tongue sits in his mouth, thick and heavy and clumsy. All his words tangle in his throat, coil tighter and tighter until his breath is nothing but small, choked exhales.

Gwen’s arm around his shoulders doesn’t register. Everything falls away, singed at the edges until the colour runs, bleeds into the red of the sheet over Ianto’s body, gathers wetly in the creases.

Even when Gwen stands on stiff knees hours later Jack remains. Keeps his trembling fingers pressed to Ianto’s neck, his other palm splayed over his chest.

They had waited three days for him to return, once. Jack will wait centuries for Ianto to open his eyes. Will wait for that small gasped inhale, for the fearful surprise Jack knows all too well, for his heart to start back up, to beat sluggishly and then all at once beneath Jack’s hands.

He will wait.

He will wait and he will wait and he will wait until Ianto smiles up at him and breathes, _”Jack.”_

_ii — anger_

Jack corners the Doctor in an alley outside a bar on Galara. The TARDIS surrounds them, humming with the same barely perceptible energy Jack had once loved. It pricks at his skin now, burns like ropes, fills his lungs like poisoned air.

“You give him back to me, Doctor. I don’t care how, but you better damn well do it.” All the calm, muted anger that had been simmering below his skin reaches boiling point, erupts in a heat so blinding Jack can do nothing but shake with it. “You owe me this. You fucking _owe me this._ ”

“Jack—“

“You bring him back or I will shoot you right into your next regeneration.”

“I can’t, Jack—“

“ _Bullshit!_ ”

“—I’m sorry, I’m so sorry, but there’s nothing I can do.”

“Well you better think fast,” Jack seethes and unholsters his Webley. “I’m not kidding around. Not this time. I’ve died for you, Doctor — more times than I can count. I’ve blindly followed you to the end of the goddamn universe and back again. _You owe me this._ ”

The Doctor’s gaze hardens. “Put the gun down, Jack.”

“No.”

“Then get off my ship!”

Silence stretches, tense and angry and Jack suffocates in it, fingers shaking around the grip of the revolver. There’s no space for fear, there’s no space for anything that isn’t the heat across his skin, the burning in his stomach — that sharp-toothed bite of rage holding him firmly in its mouth.

“ _Bring. Him. Back._ ”

The Doctor flips a lever and the TARDIS falls silent. Jack’s stomach settles back into itself. The ebb and flow of time stands still around him once more.

“I’ll do it,” Jack warns, low. “I have nothing left to lose, Doctor. I’ll do it.”

“Go on then.” The Doctor spreads his arms and raises his eyebrows, an open invitation. Jack’s finger finds the trigger, trembles just in front of it.

Through it all the Doctor just looks at him, blinks calmly, waiting. Jack’s hand burns, itches, and he wonders if he can stand it anymore. If he can add anything more to the river of blood that runs against his name — that if there will ever be enough time in the entire universe to atone for his sins.

The Doctor looks at him, old and sad and _knowing_ and Jack’s anger mounts, crests in shallow ragged exhales that pierce at his lungs, catch wetly at his tongue.

He lowers his shaking arm and the Doctor nods, takes a step back towards the console.

In a heartbeat, Jack raises his Webley, puts the barrel between his teeth and pulls the trigger.

—

There are hands on his face — gentle, calloused hands that stroke down his cheek, through his hair, cradle his jaw. They don’t stop, even when he jolts awake, gasping and heaving and grimacing at the taste in his mouth, copper and gunpowder.

The sea crashes in the distance, rhythmic against the shore, sand cold and hard and damp stretching for miles all around him. And the hands. Those damn familiar hands.

“You always were a dramatic bastard, weren’t you?” Ianto asks, exasperated and _fond_ and everything else melts away. The sea rises to a roar of white noise and Jack is on his knees, cradling Ianto’s face in his shaking, blood-stained hands.

After, Jack will find it tucked into the breast pocket of his coat. After kissing Ianto to within an inch of his life, after finding the Torchwood base intact in _Norway_ of all places, after Tosh and Owen and Gwen stare at him open-mouthed and shocked, looking for all the world like they’ve seen a damn ghost.

He will find when he’s in Ianto’s flat, as he toes off his shoes and hangs up his coat, as the TV plays to itself, as Ianto pads into the kitchen, at ease and domestic and _alive_. Only then Jack will feel, for the first time, the hard edge of something in his pocket. A postcard, weathered and worn and curling around the edges, stamped with the half-faded location _Dårlig Ulv-Stranden_. And beneath it, scrawled messily in the Doctor’s handwriting:

_Just this once, everybody lives._

_iii — bargaining_

Jack gets the transmission near Tocutis 3. It’s a pitstop on his way to the Haolivian colony. Not a glamorous one, mind, but Jack had long since stopped caring exactly what went into his glass. The bar sells exactly three drinks, all off-menu, but they’re cheap and strong enough for his mind to go fuzzy around the edges, for the corners of his grief to melt inward, dull the sharp corner into a rounded edge.

In his pocket and the tarot cards still burn. He can sense them, always. A nagging tug at the back of his mind, a cord wrapped tightly around his throat. It pulls at him every now and then; gets stronger when he books passage on another freighter, planet hops his way back through all the solar systems he thought he’d forgotten.

Jack still doesn’t know how she’d found him. Inaria was on the furthest reaches of the Savurutan cluster. It was more lightyears than he’d ever cared to count from Earth, further than even the agency had ever let him travel. But she had sat at the table in the small, crowded bar, hair longer than he remembered — pooling around the seat of her chair and glimmering slightly in the light.

As he walked by she had caught him, looked up and fixed him in her gaze, that same golden-eyed stare, irises swimming like stars, like shimmering water.

_”You have given a part of yourself willingly. The universe does not take such bargains lightly. There is hope. But it will never reach you here.”_

And then she had tucked the tarot cards into his pocket, one at a time.

The Five of Swords.

The Hanged Man, reversed.

The Two of Cups.

Jack would have thrown them all out. The last reading she had done for him had brought him nothing but misery — inadvertently fulfilled the one prophecy he had never wanted brought to light. But they were familiar, somehow. The pictures were faded, nothing but a muted wash of colour and a blur of bleeding lines but there was enough detail on the Hanged Man for Jack to see himself reflected there like he had been on the Knight all those centuries ago. And again, on the Two of Cups, facing a figure with a flash of short brown hair and a small, slightly upturned nose.

He didn’t need to pull up the only image of Ianto he had to recognise his face.

So Jack had pocketed them. Tucked the Two of Cups into his breast pocket — clung to and stomped out the tentative hope in equal measures.

Except the cards are humming, now. Buzzing with an energy that Jack can feel spreading through his limbs, all the way down to his fingers. He blames the drink, squints his eyes at the bottom of the glass and wonders if the barkeep has poisoned him. Wouldn’t be the first time.

A voice crackles through his wrist strap, tinny and filled with static. He frowns, potentially poisoned drink forgotten as he presses at the buttons, dials up the signal until it holds.

_”—a bastard, Harkness. I’ve been on the phone to UNIT for days just trying to get a bloody sodding message to wherever the hell you are. Listen, just— if you’re getting this we need you. It’s been one thing dealing with Rhys and the bloody government and UNIT breathing down my neck without Ianto tearing the Hub apart trying to find you, the poor love. Yes, Ianto. He’s alive, Jack. Came gasping back to life like a version of you hours after you left. I don’t understand it — none of us do, and yes that includes Martha, bless her — but she thinks it has something to do with Lisa, with when you brought him back. Says you gave a part of yourself to him, whatever the bloody hell that means. Sounds like a bargain with the devil if you ask me but we need you, Jack. We need you here, all of us. He needs you—“_

The transmission wavers, fades back out into bursts of short, loud static. The barkeep glares at him.

Beneath the transmissions is a set of coordinates, a precise date and time, stamped with a signal he knows comes from the Hub — or near enough to where it had been, at least.

His vortex manipulator won’t carry him that far, no matter how he tweaks it.

Above him, the board of docking ships flashes red with new arrivals, a vague holographic map of the nearest systems spinning on an invisible axis. For once he looks up at it, barks out a laugh, choked and wet, as he reads the routes, as the first letters arrange themselves across the board.

He’s onboard the Genesis within the hour, a freighter-class heading back towards Earth, back through all the systems he’d barely given a second glance to;

**_B_** etheshan — **_A_** elara — **_D_** ides 24 — **_W_** ietis — **_O_** amia — **_L_** lanephus — **_F_** olara 3.

_iv — depression_

Loiruta isn’t the most glamorous of planets, but it’s a damn sight better than the Strilenia cluster. Not that Jack particularly cares, mind. The bartender keeps his glass full as long as he continues throwing chips down on the counter. It could be a worse deal. At least they won’t cut him off here. No matter if he drinks until he can _feel_ his liver start to wither.

It’ll take another week or so until it kills him, he reckons. Even if the thought of waking up alone — again, always damn alone now — has him gulping down the drink closest to him, something purple and green. It tastes like grapes in some strange way, like the summer heat he’s all but forgotten and Jack reels his mind back in before it can draw thinly stranded connections back to Earth.

Five damn centuries later and it still all ties back to Ianto.

It’s only when he sets the glass back down he notices the slip of paper being handed to him, creased and folded once down the middle. It’s too neat to be anything but deliberate, and from beneath the fold, Jack can see the top of round, swooping letters.

”From the man, over there.”

It takes Jack a second to process the sight in front of him, longer still to focus enough on the bartender to work out what he’s saying. The syllables get caught up, twisted in the space between them and he blinks, hard, forces his mind to wrap around the words.

He considers crumpling it in his fist. Thinks of ripping it into pieces, each one smaller than the other. Thinks of watching it sink into the nearest glass, dissolving in whatever drink is closest. It’s nothing he’s interested in — not an offer of a one-night stand or a job or a hit. He’s been here long enough for the regulars to know to leave him well alone. And the effort of having to meet somebody new feels like staring into an endless abyss. Like waking up to only the echo of hands on his face.

But he can’t find the energy to do much other than stare at it, than hold it in his hands, numb and trembling — always trembling. And the weight of the gaze is familiar, it prickles at the back of his neck, heavy and stubborn.

Jack would laugh if he had it in him. Instead, he lazily lifts his head and stares the Doctor right down, blinks despondently as the Doctor nods to the paper. A hundred words bubble to Jack’s tongue, hurt and pleading and _broken_. The sharp edge of his anger melts back down to sand. He unfolds the slip of paper numbly.

The words spin, tangle together. Become nothing but a knotted mass of circles and lines, taking shape, vaguely, in the back of his mind. A shadow. An echo of a warm body, of a kiss to his temple, of a lilting laugh.

Hope is dangerous. Too dangerous. But his heart beats wildly regardless, thuds against his ribs in a painful, staccato rhythm.

The bartender eyes him warily as he sets down another drink. Jack takes it from him numbly, paper still clutched tight in the other hand. It’s a wonder the glass doesn’t shatter, doesn’t break into a million, sharp shards, splinter into his skin and nestle amongst his blood.

“Careful,” a voice says from his right and Jack keens at the familiar lilt, puts his fingers right through the paper. “Too many of those’ll kill you, sir.”

_His name is Ianto._

_v — acceptance_

“I’ve never found a use for it,” Ashildr says offhandedly as she spins the vial between her fingers.

Jack smiles, worn and tired. “Maybe it’s for the best. I think two immortals is already more than the world can handle.”

“Still,” she says, setting it down on the counter. “Must be nice finding someone you’d want to share eternity with.”

A dull ache spreads across Jack’s ribs, like a bruise that’s never quite healed. He’s learned to leave it alone, now. Mostly. Learned to stop prodding at it just to make sure it’s still there. It will remind him, when he needs it. When the world feels like it spins off its axis it will always be there. A reminder, no matter how faded, of a hand on his shoulder and a steady, comforting presence at his back.

Jack sips his drink, slowly. Lets the scotch whisk away the taste of something half-forgotten. “Yeah,” he says, slow and resigned. “It is.”

“Oh go on,” Ashildr pleads. She leans forward on her stool. “You might be the only person older than me. Only other human, anyway. So come on, Captain Jack Harkness — tell me a story.”

Jack swallows, hard, before downing the rest of his scotch in one. He gestures to the bartender for another and clears his throat, passing the empty glass between his hands.

“His name was Ianto Jones.”

It’s not until later, when the bar has all but thrown them out, when Jack walks out onto the street alone that he puts his hands into his pockets, thumbs idly over the stitching of the seam, worn and frayed after nearly a millennia, no matter how meticulously he stitches it up.

Something knocks against his fingers, cold and cylindrical. He knows without seeing what it is. A hysteric, choked laugh rises in his throat, tears from his lips before he can bite it back.

There’s a note, too. It crinkles beneath his palm as he pulls it out, as he reads the hastily scrawled words in the dim orange of the streetlamp.

He’s set the coordinates into his vortex manipulator before he can stop laughing and for the first time in a long, long time, Jack stops running.

_Jack,_

_Three's a party. Bring him to me, sometime. Drinks on me._

_A._

**Author's Note:**

> Did I break timelines and continuity for several later seasons of Doctor Who (especially regarding Ashildir)? Yes. Do I care? No. Ianto deserves immortality and he's damn well going to get it. (Plus the fact that Ashildir and Jack never got to meet was a _Crime_.)
> 
> Thank you so much for reading! If you enjoyed please consider leaving kudos or a comment <3
> 
> find me on [Tumblr](https://bashir-one-alpha.tumblr.com/) or [Twitter](https://twitter.com/ad_victori4m)


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